‘Tis the season to become more savvy about digital marketing!  Welcome to our new blog series, 12 Days of Online Marketing Tips. Over the next 12 weekdays, we’ll be presenting you with 12 nuggets of wisdom for creating powerful digital marketing campaigns. From SEO to social media and from email marketing to blogging, our series of tips will ensure you end the year brimming with bright ideas for improving your digital marketing strategies.

Without further ado, then, here’s your first top tip…

Make your Google+ updates stand out with formatting options

Did you know you can use bold text, italics and strikethroughs in Google+ updates? No, neither do a lot of people! Google doesn’t make this feature obvious, but we’ll let you in on the secret. Before we do, though, here’s an example from our own Google+ page:
 
To format text in a Google+ update, simply enclose the desired words in asterisks, underscores or hyphens as appropriate:
 

Format	Code
Bold	*your text here*
Italics	_your text here_
Strikethrough	-your text here-

It’s that easy!

Please note that your formatting options will only work in the middle of a sentence if  a space precedes the word you want to format. For example, typing 'Sale on today!*50% off everything*' will show up as is, whereas 'Sale on today! *50% off everything*' generates 'Sale on today! 50% off everything'.

What are your Google+ tips and tricks? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

Don’t forget to check back tomorrow for our second online marketing tip! This time around, we’ll be inspiring you to increase traffic to your website using Pinterest.

In the meantime, have a read of the related links listed below, including our ever-popular guide to digital marketing at Christmas time: 5 Brilliant Online Marketing Ideas for Christmas 2013.